Devil's Due
by Nyah
Summary: On Halloween the border between this world and the next is thin and Sookie Stackhouse finds herself embroiled in a curse and a love story left over from ancient Rome. My submission or the Eric and His Great Pumpkin One-Shot Contest.


**Eric and His Great Pumpkin One-shot Contest**

**Devil's Due**

**by Nyah**

**Characters: **Eric, Sookie, Godric

**Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters belong to Charlaine Harris, Alan Ball, and a bunch of legal people. I am none of these. Thus, no affiliation here.

**Summary: **Curses, possessions, and virgins, oh my! On Halloween the border between this world and the next is thin and Sookie Stackhouse finds herself embroiled in a curse and a love story left over from ancient Rome.

**Note:** AU, set post Club Dead/post as yet unaired season 3 of True Blood. Thanks immensely to whatsthefracas, pixiegiggles, and Meads for being the betas that made this whole thing work. Any remaining mistakes are mine and were added without their permission.

**Devil's due**

**The Home of Medea Pia Xantha,** **Athens, Greece, 431 B.C.**

Pia Xantha can smell a curse surer than the stink off a Roman legion. And here, holding her weeping daughter in her arms, she recognizes the reek of magic that rises with the girl's sobs. Her daughter, Mnemosyne, had finally found someone, a man who didn't care about the conditions of Mneme's birth or the empty spot where a father should be. The man had even approached Pia Xantha with plans to marry Mneme. Pia Xantha had been all too happy to grant her blessing.

But it had been all for naught. Suddenly the bastard is betrothed to another, the daughter of a friend of his father's. A more suitable match than Mneme in every way. Except that this girl cannot love him as Mneme loves him.

Pia Xantha feels her own heart breaking all over again as Mneme weeps. When the girl has cried herself to sleep, Pia Xantha takes up a torch and steals into the night. The small household gods will bear witness to her oath soon enough but first she must seek a grander audience.

The temples in this Greek city-state are not so lavish as the palatial places of worship in Rome. And here the gods bear the foreign names of her adopted homeland but Pia Xantha thinks they will recognize themselves in her prayers anyway, if she prays at them loudly enough.

**Apartment 33B, Bon Temps, Lousiana, 2003 A.D.**

Holly Cleary is not sure when this magic business got so real. She'd gotten into Wicca because she knew it would stick in her uptight mother's craw and be a nice fuck you to this town's tight-fisted Christian morals. She never expected to fall in love with it, to feel nourished by its deep roots of sisterhood. And she certainly never expected it to take a turn like this.

Her cousin Minnie is terse and older than dirt. She's also drawing some kind of hex on Holly's floor. "I'm sure even you can feel the amount of power pent up in this little town," Minnie rasps, scratching with a stump of chalk at the patch of concrete where the carpet's been pulled back. "There's something behind everything here."

Minnie completes the shape before Holly works up the courage to question the full-fledged witch. "What do you mean?"

Sitting back on old haunches, Minnie's laugh is as musical as an asthmatic mallard. "The growing edge of life, the part that's always and not yet upon us, is enough to fill the vision of most mortals. But we witches have not forgotten the old ways, we can look beyond the bud to the stems of things and sometimes, the roots."

Minnie lights candles and sets them at the points of the hex.

"You're going to trap something here. Some_one_." Holly says.

"There's a powerful spirit hovering over this place. An _old _spirit with an old task to accomplish. If we help to accomplish that task she will owe us a great debt." Minnie lights the last candle. "You look nervous girl. Afraid of ghosts, are you?"

Holly doesn't think Minnie wants to hear that summoning ghosts sounds like a sure fire way to lose her security deposit so she says, "I'm just wondering, if this spirit is as old and powerful as you're telling me, are a few candles going to hold it in?"

Minnie grins to show off almost toothless gums and then she begins to chant.

**Temple of the Gods, Athens**

The incense and candles she brought in the folds of her palla are burning in the many alcoves. Pia Xantha calls the gods by name, identifying them, pinning down the pantheon with her words. She invokes each one, even the goddess who has made herself deaf to Pia these many, long years. She has called them down before, in devotion, in anger, and in agony. But never quite like this. Never to make a bargain.

"Gods of Rome," she cries, face to the cold stone floor. "It is I, Medea Pia Xantha, who was once servant to all and priestess of Vesta. My sin against you and against Rome was great but this punishment is more than a mortal woman can bear. I ask your permission to make amends. Let the demon appear before me and I shall not flee. Let my blood, spilled willingly, wash this curse from my descendents. Let my daughters know happiness. Let them know love."

Pia Xantha prays until only one candle remains burning. Once she had been a priestess of the eternal fire, once she'd seen the fate of Rome in the flames. She'd learned the tongue of fire at the age of six. This last, guttering flame, said only what its fellows had said through the dark hours of the night: _Not yet. _

**Apartment 33B, Bon Temps**

Something is happening to the air in the room. Holly is cold and sweating at the same time and she wonders if these might be the warning signs of witch's flu, the illness that afflicts a witch practicing out of her depth. Minnie is still chanting the words she never offered to teach Holly when a new flame appears at the center of the hex.

Holly backs away. The fire forms shapes that a fire can't make, feet, ankles, knees. Minnie is shaking convulsively, her voice a ruined croak by the time a woman's lower half and torso have grown out of the flames. When the fire licks up over a face of its own creation, Minnie slumps over. Dead.

The woman in the hex reaches out to the air and tests an invisible barrier, feeling the edges of it like a less than amused mime. She stares at Holly, her skin still rippling with the glow of fire, her pale hair still threatening to burst into flame. She smiles and one by one the candles gutter out.

When only one flame remains, the woman bends to the candle and scoops the little tongue of flame up in her palm. She straightens. Then she closes her fist. The ghost woman takes a step outside the hex and she is gone.

**Merlotte's Bar and Grille, A few hours later**

"_Sookie!_" Sam calls in alarm and she realizes it's the third or fourth time he's said her name. "What are you doing?"

She looks at the pitcher of beer in her hand, confused. It's overflowing a foaming mess onto the floor and her shoes and her other hand is still pulling the tap. She lets go of both the pitcher and tap at the same time and finds herself the victim of a flood of Budweiser. "Ugh!" She cries in disgust and stomps off to get the mop.

A few minutes later she's wiping angrily at the spill and Sam and Arlene are looking on in concern. "Honey, what just happened?" Arlene asks tentatively as if she's afraid to call the anger Sookie is directing at the spill onto herself.

Sookie barks the humorless laugh of a thoroughly frustrated woman. "Would you believe I had a gosh-darned out of body experience?"

"Well... more peculiar things have happened," Arlene says and Sookie can hear the wheels turning in her head, circling around the strange bout of amnesia that gripped the town a few months ago.

Holly's come up to the bar to place a drink order but she closes her mouth quickly when she sees the mess.

"It was like I was looking at someone else's hands, thinking, _It's going to overflow you dummy_." Sookie says and resumes her mopping.

"Oh, well, that's nothin' to worry about, honey. I've done that before," Arlene says, not entirely convincingly. "You know you're driving and your mind wanders off for a minute and all of a sudden you're home without knowing exactly how you got there?"

Sookie nods and smiles tightly. Holly walks away without her drinks.

"It's so loud in here I can hardly think straight myself," Arlene continues. "And this crowd, with it being Devil's Night and all, I swear half the town's here!"

**Hummingbird Road, Bon Temps, 2:05 am**

Sookie yawns powerfully as she drives the few miles to her house. Her shift had been long and the crowd had been rowdy. She jiggles her left foot and hums a few bars of "Thriller" (which is always a popular juke box choice around Halloween) trying to stay awake despite a broken radio.

She sees something ahead on the road. A man. Running.

She blinks rapidly and moves her foot to hit the break but the vision is gone. Her face feels wrong somehow and she realizes she is smiling. But what about?

Sookie shakes her head to clear it. She dismisses the events of the evening as the products of too little sleep and too much Halloween, just a few more mildly bizarre events in her long bizarre life. She'll sleep them off and then tomorrow will be Halloween and she'll do it all over again.

A few minutes later she's pulling into her freshly graveled driveway when her head nods. Before it hits the steering wheel, her body jerks upright again. Pia Xantha opens her eyes on Bon Temps.

**Fangtasia, Shreveport, 3 am**

Pam cocks her head to one side and studies the bar. Something is off in the decorations. Something is _asymmetrical_. She hates asymmetry. Humans today seem to think it is something of a style-- asymmetrical haircuts, facial piercing, romantic entanglements... frankly, Pam just finds them all lazy and unpleasantly lopsided.

She spots the eyesore. The tables have been arranged in a crescent shape for tomorrow night's festivities. On the ends of the crescent are the tables for the non-vampire guests. On those tables are bowls of chocolate candies-- the ones made by Hershey's that faintly resemble droppings and yet are called "Kisses." Capitalizing on the human fascination with vampires, the company has wrapped the candies in black and orange foil and filled them with the sugary, liquified preserves of some red fruit or other, presumably to resemble blood. Naturally, Pam finds them revolting and just as naturally, Eric had to have them.

The candies are meant to be alternated, orange and black successively, on each table. But two adjacent tables bear the orange foiled ones. Pam sighs.

She has the offensive bowl of candies in one hand when there is a knock at the front entrance. Technically, the bar has been closed for an hour though it took longer than usual to hustle the crowd out tonight. The... high-spirits of Devil's Night have withstood the test of time even if the humans have long since forgotten its purpose. "Ginger, see who that is," Pam says when the knock comes again. Eric has invited several important supernatural beings to his celebration tomorrow and her master will not be pleased if Pam turns any early arrivals away.

Ginger hops down from a chair where she'd been struggling with an arrangement of mylar balloons shaped like fangs and walks to the door on perpetually wobbly legs. "Fangtasia," Ginger says, exactly as if she's answering the phone. "We're closed for the night. What can I do for... oh, hi Sookie! You know the party's tomorrow night, right? Oh, did Eric invite you? That's so nice!"

The door is blocking Pam's view but she can hear Sookie reply, "This is not a human place. Don't you realize you are in danger woman?"

Curious, Pam steps in as Ginger is trying to figure out how to respond. She takes one look at Sookie and snorts. "Sookie, you are wearing a bed sheet." It was an elaborately twisted and tied bed sheet, but a bed sheet nonetheless.

Sookie looks down at the evidence and responds without a hint of defensiveness, "My granddaughter, Sookie's, attire was not at all suitable for a public appearance. Her lower body was very nearly nude."

"Ain't you a little young to be havin' a granddaughter?" Ginger asks and for once Pam is wondering the same thing.

"I am over two thousand years old," Sookie says without humor. "So I think not."

"Well," Ginger says, taking a moment to assimilate the new information. "You look real good for your age."

"You are not Sookie Stackhouse," Pam says, interrupting the inane conversation.

"No," says whoever it is in Sookie's body. "I am Medea Pia Xantha, former priestess of Vesta, goddess of Rome." The priestess pauses, as if searching her memory. "And you are Pamela, demon spawn."

"That is hurtful, priestess," Pam says not hurt in the least. "Why have you come?"

**Eric's Office, Fangtasia**

Eric is tallying the tasks to be completed before dawn when there is a knock at his office door. "Enter," he says, recognizing his child's knock.

"Master," Pam says excitedly and Eric notes that Pam's human lovers must be especially courageous beings because her excitement is wonderfully terrifying. "Something very strange has happened."

Eric, a connoisseur of the strange, gives her his full attention-- something that most humans also find wonderfully terrifying.

"Come in," Pam says to someone behind her and steps back from the open door.

Her scent is the first thing to identify her. "Sookie Stackhouse," Eric says, eyes closed in an indulgence he doesn't mind her seeing at all.

"Not exactly," Pam says through a laugh.

Eric opens his eyes. "To what do I owe...? You're wearing a sheet." Then he reconsiders. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Sookie looks somewhat perturbed. "That is hardly as important as you both seem to think."

"Is that your costume for Halloween?" Eric asks. And then the more important question, "Are you wearing anything under it?"

Sookie looks at Eric with a familiar fire in her blue eyes. "I feel I should be offended but my granddaughter seems to think that this behavior is to be expected of you, demon."

Eric looks at Pam, who is barely restraining laughter, for clarification. "Master, may I introduce Medea Pia Xantha, priestess of Vesta of Rome."

"A Vestal Virgin," Eric says, impressed. "And _not_ a Halloween costume I gather."

"Apparently not," Pam says with glee. "She claims to be an ancestor of Sookie's. A _ghost_."

Pia Xantha never takes her eyes off Eric, just waits for her turn to speak as if she is waiting out the excited gossip of children. "The title you've given me is misinformed," she says, choosing her words carefully. "I was cast out of the favor of the gods and the service of Vesta for my sins. But I am, as Pamela says, an ancestor of this woman whose body I now inhabit. As proof, I offer the circumstance of my selection as priestess of Vesta. As a girl, at the age of six, I was judged to be without physical or mental defect but found also to possess a unique talent: the ability to pluck the truth from the minds of men. The high priest of Rome declared that my gift was a fitting tribute to the goddess of the hearth and I was made priestess. I see in the mind of my granddaughter that my gift has passed to her along with my curse."

Eric senses that the woman before him is going to interfere with his holiday plans but he is intrigued by her story. He knows a thing or two about the nature of ghosts. "I assume it is because of this curse that you are here."

Pia Xantha nods Sookie's head. "I have crossed time to complete the task the gods set for me and I abandoned." She steps around Eric's desk to where he sits, transfixed. The priestess stands between his knees and tugs at a knot so the sheet drops to the ground. She rolls her head to the side in an unmistakable gesture. "Demon, I have come to offer myself to you."

Pam loses her battle and dissolves into convulsions of laughter.

"Is there a problem?" Pia Xantha demands.

"No," Eric says, barring the sudden southern flight of most of his blood and all of this thoughts. "No. But I cannot say that was the response I was expecting."

"Are you refusing to accept my sacrifice, demon?"

"My name is Eric."

"I am aware," says Pia Xantha then rolls her eyes in way that is uncomfortably familiar. "Are you refusing to accept my sacrifice, Eric?"

He had forgotten what 'overwhelmed' felt like. A groan rises up out of his long dead guts and he lets his head, heavy with an unfortunate morality, fall to rest against her sternum. A position that brings him face to... well, _teat_ with her most excellent cleavage and a position that, coincidentally, will have her blistering his ears with southern indignation if she ever finds out. "I am an idiot," He says honestly to curves of her breasts. "And I am refusing."

**A Chair Hastily Moved Into Eric's Office, Fangtasia**

Sookie is angry. Justifiably so, she thinks. She's been watching her ghost of a grandmother (with too many 'greats' attached to bother with) run her body all over northern Louisiana and now she's in Eric's office with his head on her chest and she's naked and Grandma Pia has just put her back in the driver's seat. She steps back hastily from the vampire and realizes immediately that the position is not much better since it gives him room to ogle her, which he does, blatantly.

"Sookie, I presume," Eric says when he finally gets around to looking her in the eye again.

"I need clothes," she says, trusting him to figure out he's right on his own.

Eric gestures to the fabric that is pooled at her feet.

"Eric, that's a sheet."

"Took you long enough to notice," Pam says from the corner where she's laughing so hard that if she needed to breathe she'd be in serious trouble.

A few minutes later Sookie is sitting in Eric's office wearing an oversized Fangtasia t-shirt much like the one she'd worn after the maenad's attack. Eric's also donated a pair of silk boxers to the "clothe Sookie" cause and she's already told him that he cannot have them back when she's through with them. She'll buy him another pair.

Pam enters the office again and plunks a bowl of orange wrapped Hershey's Kisses into Sookie's lap. "I am told they are delicious."

Eric is leaning against the edge of his desk in jeans and a black ribbed undershirt. She suspects that the shirt she is wearing is the one he was wearing moments ago but she knows what is said about gift horses and mouths and, like most things, it probably goes double for vampires. She tries not to think about the shorts.

Pam goes to stand next to Eric and together they stare at Sookie, leaning forward with interest like she might suddenly do something remarkable. "So, I'm sure you'd like to know how you came to be here," Pam says.

"Nope," Sookie says with as much lightness as she can muster. "I've got that all figured out."

"You do?" Pam says in flat disbelief.

"Yep," Sookie taps a temple with her index finger. "Grandma Pia told me all about it on the drive from Bon Temps. Believe me, I am less than thrilled with this whole possession thing but she's made it perfectly clear that I don't have a choice." Sookie doesn't add that Pia Xantha's done her best to convince her that it's for her own good.

Eric just stares but Pam asks, "You are yourself again? The priestess is gone?"

"She's not gone," Sookie tries to explain but the whole notion of sharing body space with an ancient Roman priestess is new to her too. In fact, it's a huge point of pride for her that she has yet to, as Jason would say, _lose her shit_. "She's just, I don't know, quiet right now."

Eric finally speaks. "You should stay," he says. "Until Dr. Ludwig gets here."

"I have to stay anyway," Sookie says and thinks, _I cannot believe I'm saying this._ "I need you to bite me. Please."

**Eric's Office, Fangtasia, **

Living or dead, Pam thinks this might be the greatest night of her existence. They are a fascinating pair, her maker and the blond breather. They are experts at pushing each other's buttons, as the expression goes, though Pam knows that it's not proverbial buttons of Sookie's that Eric would like to push.

To a human eye, Eric recovers quickly enough from Sookie's announcement, saying, "And here you thought you'd never ask. But the answer is still 'no.'"

But to Pam he's like nothing so much as a tom cat that's been tossed into a river and is now trying to pretend he's not dripping wet and riled up. A more succinct way of saying it would be 'stunned.'

"I'm serious, Eric," Sookie says and her tone says 'unfortunately.'

"And I'm not?" Eric counters, arms crossed, smirk lodged firmly in place.

"Almost never," Sookie says and Pam watches her mirror Eric's stance from her chair-- crossed arms right down to the smirk that keeps threatening the integrity of her scowl.

"I'm going to need more information first," Eric's eyes flick to the discarded sheet to clarify the intended topic of conversation. "I won't just bite a woman because she asks me to."

Pam turns her head slowly to look at her master, trying not to laugh is like trying not to bite an injured fairy. "Så dum är hon inte," Pam says in chorus with Sookie's, "You really _are_ a big faker. Like I would believe that for one second."

"It makes him feel used," Pam says flatly, throwing another blatant lie into the mix and getting half a smile out of Eric and an eye roll out of Sookie for her efforts.

"Why not ask Bill? I understand that you are no longer on the best of terms but his proximity would still make him the obvious choice," Eric points out. "Especially for someone wearing a sheet."

This worms its way under Sookie's calmly annoyed exterior and she shifts in her chair. "It has to be you."

"Why?"

Pam watches the air between them. Eric makes no joke about how so many women have come to that conclusion and it was only a matter of time with her. He is in this game far more deeply than even he can guess. Pam's just glad to have ringside seats.

Sookie draws in a long breath and the atmosphere in the room changes. "Eric, I...." She opens and closes her mouth a few times like the English language has gotten caught in her throat. Then her body goes slack. When she sits again, her voice is flatter, more measured. "My granddaughter is reluctant to explain our situation to you, de...Eric. She seems to believe that doing so will damage you somehow. Apparently this concerns her."

"But not you?" Eric says, testing for some semblance of human compassion or, more likely, guilt.

The woman who was once a priestess affects a beatific smile. "They call you 'vampire' now demon and give you the rights of a citizen. Perhaps your savagery is buried beneath civility... but this is not my time and you are not the demon I knew."

Her insinuations barely seem to register with Eric. "Sookie believes something you will say can hurt me, why?"

The priestess shrugs with her eyebrows. "The story of my family's curse involves a... a man called Godric."

The change in Pam's master is immediate. His anger and longing fill him so completely that they spill over into her. There is no sense in her action when she lunges at the priestess but she can't stop herself from moving. Instead her master stops her with an arm across her chest like a mother defending a child from a car accident. Though in this scenario, she is the car accident.

Pam can't tear her eyes from Pia Xantha when she says, "There is something to Sookie's concerns, I see."

"Tell me," Eric says with an edge to his voice. He is not above threatening her. Not now.

Pia Xantha turns her head slightly as if listening to a sound too faint even for vampire hearing. She is quiet for many long minutes.

"Tell me," Eric says again and Pam is straining against his arm.

"My granddaughter has accepted that I will not be swayed in my course. Since you must be told, she feels obligated to be the one to tell you." Pia Xantha smiles fondly, her first truly human expression. Pam was beginning to suspect that she herself was a demon. "But she requests that you leave the room, Pamela."

"Go," her master says before Pam can raise a protest. She stalks out of the room thinking how hypocritical it is for a telepath to demand privacy.

**Sookie Stackhouse's Body, Eric's Office, Fangtasia **

"Pia Xantha was a priestess of Vesta, like she said, and she was a telepath. I guess that's where I get it from," Sookie begins unceremoniously when Pia Xantha steps back into the recesses of her granddaughter's mind. "She was, um, a Vestal Virgin like _you _said."

Pia Xantha watches the gears of her granddaughter's mind turn, watches her remarkable capacity for things beyond her realm of experience. She watches the demon's face, too, through her granddaughter's eyes. He is riveted but Sookie withstands the intensity of the gaze as well as any high priestess could.

"She liked her job, I think," Sookie continues. "It had some pretty good perks for the time. She could own land and vote and all, even though she was a woman. And she was highly respected. The priestesses took care of this flame that was never allowed to go out...." Sookie looks up at the demon and Pia Xantha can hear her counting the minutes until dawn. "Do you already know all this stuff?"

The demon nods, the first movement he's made since Pamela left the room.

"Okay, well something else she could do was pardon a person who was condemned to die." Sookie pauses again to order Pia Xantha's thoughts into her own words and Pia Xantha lends her the authority of a priestess's voice. "A few years after she became a priestess, a demon... well, a vampire, showed up outside the city. Young men and women would be drawn to him-- I guess he glamored them-- and he'd kill them. Soldiers tried to find the vampire and kill him but they were no match for him at night and they could never find where he slept during the day.

"When Pia Xantha was seventeen, there was a boy who was taken by the vampire but he returned to the city alive and unbitten. The people were amazed. The boy told them about their demon. He said the demon looked very much like a man and he could speak Latin. The boy said he was cruel and bloodthirsty but he was also wise and could be made to see reason. The boy claimed that the demon had not always been a demon, he'd been a man, a legionnaire of Rome, in fact. And the boy said he knew the man's name but refused to reveal it for the sake of the man's descendants.

"The boy wanted the people to talk with the demon. He said the demon didn't have to kill to live, he needed some of their blood but not all of it. The people began listening to the boy and demanding that their leaders approach the demon with terms of truce. But this upset many of the elite of the city. Several of them had lost sons and daughters to the demon and they wanted him killed. They accused the boy of treason, said his preaching undermined the unity of the city and inspired the people toward their own ruin. He was sentenced to be offered to the demon for his treason.

"My grandmother had heard about the things the boy was saying and she agreed with the senators who'd condemned him. She was a priestess of the goddess of home and family after all and he was urging dealings with a demon that killed and ate children.

"On the day of the boy's execution, there was also a religious festival in the city. Pia Xantha was being carried through the streets in her palanquin to the site where she would perform the rituals of her order. But her route intersected the parade of people that were carrying the boy toward the city gates so he could be lashed to a tree to await the demon. Her guards tried to divert the crowd but the priests and senators had been making speeches, winning their minds, all morning and there was no stopping them and the mob swept around Pia Xantha's palanquin.

"For a few moments she was even with the boy who was being carried on the shoulders of the mob. The boy's eyes were closed and he looked... calm. Pia Xantha had glimpsed guilty men before, and they never looked quite like this boy. She sent a prayer up to her goddess that he would open his eyes because if a condemned man even looked upon a Vestal Virgin on his way to be executed he was pardoned. But the boy's eyes remained closed. In his mind she could hear him praying for the crowd. He was refusing to open his eyes and see the people he knew had become more evil than the demon they feared.

"Pia Xantha was troubled. She believed that the boy had spoken evil things but she wanted to question him, she was not convinced that he deserved to die. So in a flash of insight, she ordered her guards to stop and, arms raised, stood up on her palanquin. Slowly, the people marching up the packed street took notice of the young priestess standing on level with their heads. One by one they stopped and pointed and one by one they alerted those in front until even the portion of the mob that had passed by with the boy stopped.

When she ordered her guards to move again, the people parted for the palanquin, eyes downcast because they had impeded a priestess on her way to perform holy rites. But she commanded the guards to bring her even with the condemned boy. He was the same as before, eyes closed, praying. 'Boy,' Pia Xantha said, though he must have been near her age. 'I am a priestess of the holy Vesta.'

"The boy replied. 'I have heard the people say this.'"

"'And _I_ have heard your prayers. Not all of us are so ugly as you think. Will you truly refuse to see another human face while you live? Will you not open your eyes now and be saved?' She spoke in the voice she used to lead the people of Rome in prayer, a voice steeped in tradition and mystery."

"But still the boy replied, 'I will not.'"

"In his mind Pia Xantha saw conviction bolstered by pride. She said, sadly, shaken out of her priestess's voice, 'You are very wise but also very young. It is not yet time to die.'"

"'No younger than you, priestess,' he replied though he could not see her."

"Pia Xantha reached out her hand and touched the hem of his robe and just like that, the boy's guilt was dissolved and the people set him on his feet.

"In the weeks that followed, the boy came often to the temple of Vesta, bringing tribute to the goddess and her priestesses. He'd kneel dutifully before the eternal flame of Vesta's hearth but he'd look up boldly to catch the eyes of Pia Xantha. He'd pray for the opportunity to speak with the priestess and wonder if she'd hear his prayers once again.

"Pia Xantha heard every word, of course. She heard other things too. She heard about the boy's life as an orphan, little better than a slave, in the temple of Jupiter and his work cleaning up the blood of the sacrifices. She saw that he'd grown up listening to debates among the priests and she heard his wild and frightening ideas about the gods and about the nature of mankind. She heard the rumors that said the demon had taken him because of his brilliance and spared him for the defects of his soul. And more and more she heard his memories of the sound of her own voice and his thoughts about the pleasing nature of her face and figure. She heard that he was called Godric and that he was eighteen years old."

Sookie pauses for a moment in the story, giving Eric time to interject, to stop the story and its inevitable end. But he only nods and Pia Xantha suspects that he knew all along.

"The priestess felt conflicted," Sookie continues reluctantly. "Many of the priestesses had visions of the goddess when they slept but her dreams were increasingly about the boy, about his eyes closed in prayer and then open on her face, about the hem of his robe between her fingertips." Sookie blushes and Pia Xantha regards her grandchild fondly. She is strong, Pia Xantha knows, but still young enough to be embarrassed by the beginning of someone else's love story.

"Finally she sent one of the temple guards to deliver a message to Godric. Because he'd been accused of treason and was known to have heretical ideas she would meet him in a courtyard at the edge of the temple complex and instruct him in prayer.

"And on their first meeting, Pia Xantha did just that. She spent two hours, from afternoon to sunset praying with Godric. Their second meeting was the same. But on the third, he spoke out of turn. She'd been facing west and towards the temple of Vesta, away from him as she prayed aloud when he said, 'My prayers are not improving priestess, though your teaching is not at fault.'

"She replied, 'You pray perfectly, my teaching is not at fault because there is nothing for me to teach you.' It was the truth. He knew the words and rhythms of prayer as well as she did.

"'But those are only the prayers of my voice,' he replied. 'The prayers of my heart are much more dangerous. And the prayers of my body... those are too dangerous to be given voice.'

"When she turned his head was still bowed like a penitent's. 'I have heard the prayers of your heart. As for the others....' Pia felt as if Vesta flame was unfolding in her body, the eternal hearth fire that could never be quenched. But she forced her mind onto other matters. 'When the mob was bringing you to be left for the demon, why were you not afraid?'

"On his knees, the boy shrugged. 'The demon me told that he would only take me again if I came willingly. He is a creature of the darkness and I was not eager to return to him but nor am I afraid of the dark and there was little enough to keep me in the city or the company of these _civilized_ men. But now...'

"Still kneeling, he took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips as if he was seeking a blessing. But the kiss itself was the blessing. 'You came to me in the street as a priestess,' he said, holding her eyes with his own. 'But before you touched me you spoke to me as a woman. The priestess of Vesta could not have saved my life but you did.'

"'If only you'd opened your eyes, you could have saved yourself.' Pia Xantha replied.

"'No,' Godric argued. 'I had already given my life up for lost. A person cannot save himself. Being saved requires a savior.'

"'I am no one's savior. I am a priestess of holy Vesta. No more and no less.'

"'And this is what you will be forever?'

"'We are permitted to leave the order when our term of service is finished. Former priestesses marry well.'

"Godric nodded, he still held her hand. 'Yes, you will be highly valued for what you once were. But what about the woman you are now? You who saved my life even though you are not a savior?' She tried to pull her hand away from him but he refused her struggle. 'You are very wise but also very young. It is not yet time to die.'

"Pia Xantha closed her trapped hand into a fist. 'What do you want from me, slave?'

"Godric smiled like he had smiled when the mob was carrying him to his fate. 'Only prayers,' he said and something in Pia Xantha broke, or maybe it burned. She learned the prayers of his body there in the courtyard, she read the runes of ink that were carved under his skin and heard the first honest incantations he'd ever uttered fall from his lips. And she burned, yes certainly, she burned.

"It was nearly dawn when they parted. Because she had been gone from her duties, Vesta's flame had gone untended for hours but it still burned and no one found her out. In the weeks that followed she continued to meet Godric and the guards who'd sworn to protect all secrets of the priestesses of Vesta never said a word. In the end, it was her body that betrayed her, swelling in a way that a chaste woman's body cannot swell.

"When she could not conceal her pregnancy from the other priestesses, the high priestess called on the temple guards and put them to question. Their silence did not stand against the high priestess to whom they were sworn. When it was discovered that the once condemned Godric was the father of Pia Xantha's child and the source of her unforgivable sin against the goddess, the usual punishment for an unfaithful priestess was altered. Instead of being buried alive beneath the city as should have happened, Pia Xantha was to be offered to the demon who'd clearly won possession of her heart through the boy, Godric.

"For fear that the demon might spare Pia Xantha and the child as he had spared the child's wicked father, the priestesses of Vesta also placed a curse upon their fallen sister, that Vesta's eternal flame might stake claim to the best parts of her, her love and devotion, as it was always meant to do and that it might burn up any pretender that tried to take its place, turning Pia Xantha's traitorous happiness and that of her daughters' to ash in their mouths for as long as their blood went unspilt.

"Pia Xantha was tied to a tree outside the city to await the demon who lived there and when the sun faded from the sky, he came to her. But Godric came to her as well, having heard of her plight from the priests. She had refused to see him for the past several weeks but her swollen belly barely gave him pause before he began working on the ropes that bound her. When the demon arrived, Godric stood before her. 'Appius Livius Ocella, he said. 'This woman has been offered to you as atonement for her sins. But they are my sins as well and I offer my blood in place of hers.'

"'Your blood?' Asked the demon in a voice that sounded human but colder. 'But in this woman are two hearts that pump blood and the blood of the unborn is sweet beyond description.'

"'Then take my life,' Godric said without hesitation. 'You told me you do not need to kill to live and that you would only take me again if I came to you willingly. Take my life because I give it freely and spare theirs because you can.'

"Pia Xantha screamed and twisted her wrists in the ropes until they bled but the demon ignored her. 'There is much you do not understand little human. But perhaps I can teach you. You offer your life....'

"'Yes,' Godric replied. 'Life.'

"'I accept,' The demon said and tied to the tree, Pia Xantha watched the demon drain the life from the boy she loved. She prayed to the goddess Vesta in her anguish but the goddess did not hear her. The demon forgot her in his bloodlust and the sight of her, bound but unharmed, terrified the people of Rome so that they would not go near her and she remained bound to the tree for three days.

"On the night of the third day, the demon returned to her and broke her bonds. In the shadows of the hills, Pia Xantha could see a boy moving. He was as swift and pale as quicksilver. She recognized her love who'd become as much a demon as the legionnaire and who, the legionnaire said could not now bear to come near her.

"The demon left her. She was tired and thirsty after three days without food or water. The barren dryness of her mouth was like ash and she knew the curse was upon her."

When Sookie finishes the tale, both she and the vampire are silent for a long time, though not long by Pia Xantha's standards.

Finally, Eric speaks, "And I should believe the words of a defiled virgin priestess, why?"

Sookie shrugs. "Because she's telling the truth," she says simply and he seems to accept it. "Didn't... didn't you ever ask Godric how he was made?"

"No," Eric replies. "For me, there was nothing before there was Godric."

Pia Xantha can see in Sookie's thoughts how rare this moment of honesty is but there is not time to revel in the fact. The sun will rise soon and the anniversary of her near sacrifice will pass. Sookie speaks at her prompting. "Eric, will you do it? She's been cursed, my family's been cursed for so long. She says it's the reason Bill...."

The vampire's eyes widen slightly but his face remains otherwise closed. "Why me?" He asks. "Some kind of poetic justice? I hate poetry."

"No," Sookie says. "You're his descendent, the legionnaire's, just like I'm hers. The power to lift the curse passed to Godric when the Roman died and then to you when Godric.... It has to be you. Eric, please."

**Under A Curse She Never Knew About, Eric's Office, October 31st, an hour before sunrise**

Sookie thinks that this might be more terrifying than being staked in Jackson. Pia Xantha's tale has created a sense of urgency in her, the curse feels real even though it's always been there and she never knew it. "Come on Eric," she reasons. "I've been bitten before, you've bitten thousands of people before. No big deal."

But there is a haunted look in Eric's eyes that Sookie's only seen once before. "This is different," Eric says. "She bore his child. He loved her."

"Yeah, yeah," Sookie says though there are still tears on her face from the story she told. "He loved her and you loved him and I..." She stops short of the biggest Freudian slip of her life.

"You?" Eric prompts with a half-hearted smirk.

"I have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth," Sookie says. "Can we get this over with?"

"Well, when you make it sound so appealing how can I refuse?" He sounds more like himself now and steps up to the chair where Sookie sits, drawing her to her feet. She bears her neck but he doesn't bite. "Is there a volume requirement?" He asks drily, sounding very much as if he does feel used.

Sookie consults her grandmother. "Pia Xantha was given to the demon to punish her and to stop him from taking an innocent. Just drink until you're not hungry." Then she thinks better of it and adds, "But, you know, not until I'm dead."

Eric laughs but he still doesn't bite. "What are you waiting for?" Sookie demands. "Hello! Neck bared here! This is your invitation."

He takes her hand in his and she turns her head back to look at him better. "You and I both know that it will be extremely painful for you if I just bite you."

She means to protest but a locked trunk in Jackson stops her. So she looks down at her hand that is swallowed up in Eric's pale fingers. She remembers the story. "What are you doing?"

He remembers too. "Don't worry Sookie, I never learned to pray. But I can make you feel good, the way this is supposed to feel." When he moves his not praying hand, he takes hers with it, moving them together over her body. "You can stop me whenever you want."

Sookie's pulse pounds in her ears like her blood is already trying to abandon her for him. His hands carry hers to stroke the contours of her stomach and her back under the borrowed shirt and it's good that he doesn't know how to pray because there's something unholy in the way those hands feel.

Things had already happened between them in Jackson and she can't make herself see the harm in letting things go again where they'd already gone. Her hand covers his and guides him down between her legs. His long fingers go to work as as she urges them on with pressure on the back of his hand.

She feels him hard against her back and a fire blooms in her, burning her alive and empty with need. "Eric," she pleads and grinds her hips against him.

But when she hits the edge, it is only with his fingers dancing inside her. "You were supposed to stop me," he says and bites as she screams.

**Eric's Office, too close to dawn**

"There is a problem, lover," Eric whispers to the wounds on her neck. "I will never be full of you."

He holds Sookie against him while she pants and shivers with the aftershocks of release. He knows the moment the priestess replaces her and it troubles him more than her cares to think about that Sookie might be running from him.

"I thank you for accepting my sacrifice, Eric," the priestess says. "And I thank you for not taking, well, full advantage of my granddaughter."

"My pleasure," Eric assures her.

"The spell that brought me here was crudely constructed," the priestess cautions. "My entry into this world and my granddaughter's mind was-- abrupt. Do not be surprised if she does not remember."

Eric nods and looks at the priestess, wondering if Sookie looks anything like the woman that Godric loved. "It wasn't really about me anyway. Or her," he says.

"No," Pia Xantha replies. "Not yet."

"You are grinning, priestess," Eric observes and he knows his own grin has gone feral. "Does that mean your curse is lifted? Happily ever afters all around?"

If anything Pia Xantha's grin grows larger. "You are not like the demon I knew, Eric Northman. As far as your question goes, perhaps you will see for yourself soon enough."

Sookie's head bobs like she's dropped off to sleep. When it raises again, Sookie blinks rapidly. She looks around the office, confused but calm, like she's in shock or not quite woken from a dream.

Which fits into Eric's plan quite nicely.

"Eric?" She asks tentatively but he's moved back to sit at his desk and doesn't look up from his paperwork. "_Eric."_

He looks up long enough to see that she's staring in horror at her borrowed clothing. "You should go home, Sookie. The sun's almost up. This whole place will go up in flames."

"It will?"

"Of course," He says casually. It's been a long time since he's dreamed but he remembers that dreams have rules of their own.

**Fangtasia, minutes before dawn**

Pam is trying to suppress a yawn when Sookie exits Eric's office holding her folded bed sheet. The first thing Pam notices (after the sheet because only Sookie doesn't notice sheets) are the fresh puncture marks on Sookie's neck. "Cursed ancestor ghost free, are we?" Pam asks, stifling another yawn.

"What?"

Pam stares at her in disbelief for the second time that night.

Sookie raises a hand to the marks on her neck. "Ow.... Wait, am I dreaming?"

"Yes," Pam says in annoyance. "Take these with you and go." Pam shoves the bowl of orange Kisses into Sookie's hands and pushes her towards the door. "And Sookie, you should go as a Vestal Virgin for Eric's Halloween party tonight. I think it would be a good look for you."

**Fantasia's Parking Lot, Halloween, as the sun rises**

Sookie Stackhouse shivers in the early morning air as she makes her way towards her car. She notes with annoyance that the keys have been left in the ignition. _Grandma Pia, this is the twenty-first century! People steal things._

_Oh, people have always done that, _Pia Xantha replies. _I didn't have time to put pockets in that bed sheet. _

_Don't get me started on the sheet, _Sookie thinks back at her ghostly passenger. _But thanks for telling Eric I wouldn't remember. I really don't want to deal with... him, right now. _

_You're welcome_, Pia Xantha says. _But you're going to have to deal with him sooner or later, I think._

_Maybe not, _Sookie says.

_It was decent of the vampire to let you think you were dreaming_, Pia Xantha says grudgingly.

Sookie laughs out loud. _Not really. I mean, how long would that last? I'd get home and still be wearing all his clothes._

_Oh! _Pia Xantha exclaims. That... that..._!_

_Big faker?_

_Yes. _

**End**


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